SEO – Search engine optimization for your site

Where do YOU go to find information …

… yes, that’s right, you fire up your favorite web browser and you use a search engine.

You don’t go to a library or a book store or browse a magazine – in fact you almost certainly found this site using a search engine, probably Google.

The only search engines to concern yourself with are Yahoo, MSN and of course the almighty Google, the later accounting for most of the searches conducted by web surfers looking for information.

So how do you make sure that real estate buyers and sellers will find your cleverly written website, which is lurking there in Cyberspace waiting for them to land on it?

You will follow tried and tested practices called "search engine optimization (SEO for short) that have worked for many others just like you, many of which didn’t know even where to start.

Think of SEO as marketing to the search engines!

Many real estate agents rely on paying for traffic – this involves signing up for "paid" search – Adwords otherwise known as PPC – pay per click (more about pay per click here) or some other similar program and paying everytime someone clicks on links like this:

Many popular real estate search terms cost $1 to $4 a click – in other words every time someone clicks a link your account is dinged and this can add up really quickly.

Have you ever wondered how some of your competitors managed to gain free "organic search" results (the green portion of the illustration above) in the search engines?

This is not rocket science but you will need to learn and apply the basics of how to tweak the settings of your site so you don’t become a slave to "pay per click" advertising forever. You should also know that more people click on the organic results than they do the paid searches. Yet another reason to get started on optimization.

We are huge fans of the WordPress platform, it’s already SEO friendly and with a few additions and changes you can easily turn your site into a very appealing lead generating machine.

If you have not yet completed the steps outlined in the Blogging for leads lesson we recommend that you choose a domain name and set up a WordPress site before continuing here. Peter’s blogs have been optimized using these techniques – here is an example – this stuff works!

So lets get started!

Step 1: Get advice from the source

Google employees have created an excellent primer for SEO, you can download the free PDF file here: Google search engine optimization starter guide.  Simply following the principals of their advice will get you maybe 50% toward you optimization goals!

Tip: There are short cuts to optimizing title and description tags on your pages – Premium members will get the full details.

Premium members will also have access to a little known method of internal page linking that allows real estate agents to achieve 1st page resuts in the search engines for their chosen neighborhood specific key words.

Step 2: Learn how to write copy that is readable AND optimized …

 .. for your visitors yet is supercharged for the search engines. You don’t want to be "stuffing" your copy with your main keywords – search engines don’t like it and it makes your copy sound forced.

Reading from a screen is different. If you want advice from a professional writer we recommend buying an inexpensive ebook – Get Your Writing Fighting Fit which reveals the inside information professional editors know about how to approach the editing task.

Step 3: Install Google Analytics it’s free and easy to install. 

Learn more about where your visitors come from and how they interact with your site. You’ll get the information you need to write better ads, strengthen your marketing initiatives, and create higher-converting sites. Platinum members can learn more about installing and interpreting Google Analytics here.

Step 4: Run your new site through Website Grader …

… a free seo tool that measures the marketing effectiveness of a website. It provides a score that incorporates things like website traffic, SEO, social popularity and other technical factors. It also provides some basic advice on how the website can be improved from a marketing perspective. You can see a sample report here.

Step 5: Trackbacks and comment links.

These are a little understood way of gaining links to your site. You could simply find posts of interest and write a comment at the end of the post with your website address, but some bloggers are getting smart and automatically enabling no-follow links which means there is no SEO advantage for you.

However, there is one sure way to get great links to your blog. 

Find interesting articles on subjects your readers would be interested in. Write and expand on the other bloggers posts and link back to the original post. This will create a trackback – a link back to your site from the other blog – powerful stuff but don’t overdo it, once a week would be enough!

Tip: There is an advanced method for achieving even better results through trackbacks is available to Platinum Members only.  

More implementation suggestions:

If you are not a Premium member sign up today!  You will have immediate access to step by step lessons with screenshots showing each and every step to take for the above tips - let’s get started!

If you really do not have the time and would rather pay to have someone else do the SEO work for you we have several recommendations: Outsource link building to IneedHits.com – guaranteed listing in Google in 7 days. Trend Metrix offer free trial software that will help you rank better on Google. They are one of the handful of 100% white hat search engine optimization companies in the world that guarantee top 10 natural search engine ranking with a 95% success rate!

Other resources

SEO Book has some great resourses and free SEO tools and a free SEO course by email. Members get over 100 training modules, covering topics like: keyword research, link building, site architecture, website monetization, pay per click ads, tracking results, and more.

SEO eBook is expensive but worth every cent if you want to go all the way with optimizing your site for the search engines.

Premium members recieve step by step lessons with screenshots showing each and every step to take in setting up your blog - signup or upgrade today and let’s get started!

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